The United Irishmen, their lives and times

Front matter

THE UNITED IRISHMEN, THEIR LIVES AND TIMES. A LONDON : E. Brewster, Hand Coubt, Dowgate. THE UNITED IEISHMEN, THEIR LIVES AND TIMES. BY R. R. MADDEN, M.D., AUTHOR OF " TRAVELS IN THE EAST," &C. &C. " The mind of a nation, when long-fettered and exasperated, will struggle and bound, and when a chasm is opened, will escape through it, like lava from the crater of a volcano." — J. K. L. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : J. MADDEN & CO., LEADENHALL STREET. MDCCCXLII. DEDICATION. vo WILLIAM HENRY CURRAN, ESQ., WHOSE CLAIMS TO THE REGARD AND ESTEEM or HIS COUNTRYMEN ARE MORE THAN HEREDITARY ; THE BIOGRAPHER OF JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN THE SON OF THAT MOST EMINENTLY GIFTED MAN, WHOSE LIFE WAS DEVOTED TO HIS COUNTRY, WHOSE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, IN THE WORST OF TIMES, IN BEHALF OF HIS UNFORTUNATE COUNTRYMEN, ARE NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN; 0 ins 2Æ3orft is titscri&rti, AS A TRIBUTE, AT ONCE, OF RESPECT TO THE LIVING AND OF HONOUR TO THE DEAD ■1 THE AUTHOR. London, \Oth May, 1842.

Preface

. It has been justly observed, in reference to the times and movements I have attempted to illustrate, that the political convulsions which agitated Europe at the close of the last and the commencement of the present century, are removed from our days by a space longer than the average which Nature assigns to a generation ; they have passed from the turmoil of cotemporary events, to take their place for ever in the sober records of history. The shadows, clouds, and darkness, which the heat of passions, the fury of parties, and the violence of selfish interest, threw around every event of this period, have been solved and dispelled since the passions have cooled — the parties disappeared, and the interests dwindled away which were then predominant. England can do justice to the reformers of 1794 — can bear to have their merits shewn, and their errors displayed; —

PREFACE.

. X It is not unprofitable, even now, to reflect on the use which its partizans made of their power in those bad times, when every man who became obnoxious to their body, by taking a prominent part in any political proceedings opposed to their views and interests, was accounted disaffected to the state ; and even when loyal men, indignant at the treat ment they received, were driven by unfounded accusations and dishonourable suspicions into crimi nal courses. It behoves the persons who take any leading part in liberal politics, to recur a little to past events, and to recall the first agitation of the question of Reform in Ireland, and the subsequent fate of a great number of the men who were its early advocates. In Ireland the ascendancy party marked out its political opponents at that period, as covert traitors, who were to be legally removed at a convenient oppor tunity.

It panted only for the exercise of "that vigour beyond the law/' which was the privilege of its exclusive loyalty. Its victims were not the least influential, the least estimable, the most insignificant of the opposing party. The pubhc service was made the pretext for the destruction of opponents, and with these they filled the prisons and provosts of Ireland.

PREFACE.

. XI Little do the people of England know of the class of persons who were driven into rebellion. English men may probably have heard that a number of obscure, ill-disposed and reckless men, had engaged in an unnatural and unprovoked rebellion, and were executed; that the leaders of it were poor, discon tented, embarrassed wretches, persons of no stand ing in society, of no character in private life, con taminated by revolutionary doctrines and popish principles. If such persons read this work, they will find that a great portion of these unfortunate persons, were gentlemen by birth, education, and profession : — many of them celebrated for their talents, respected for their private worth ; several of them scholars who had distinguished themselves in the University of Dublin; the majority of them members of the Established Church ; some of them Presbyterian ministers ; few, if any, of them who did not exert more or less influence over their countrymen.

While Scotland preserves the memory of those who fell in the Rebellion of 174-5, while their lives and actions are recorded by loyal Scotchmen, and read by loyal Englishmen, there can be no rea son why the reminiscences of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and of those who unfortunately were engaged in it, should not be faithfully recorded, without pre- XU

PREFACE.

. judice to the loyalty of the writer, or the reader of their history. We have outhved the wrongs that made rebels of these men. In our times their descendants are possessed of rights, for the enjoyment of which they have reason to be good and loyal subjects. It is now not only their duty, but their interest to be so. Their fathers lived at a period when the great body of the people laboured under grievous wrongs. They thought, perhaps erroneously, that " Tyranny was not government, and that allegiance was due only to protection." There is a degree of oppression, which we are told, by Divine authority, drives even " wise men mad." Whether the wrongs of the people, and their sufferings under the penal code, amounted to that degree, the reader must determine. Their leaders certainly acted on the belief, that their grievances had reached, and passed, the limits of human patience.

One who has seen the miserable effects of political commotions and revolutions in other countries, is not likely to regard engagement in simdar struggles as the result, at all times, of the exercise of the highest courage or the purest patriotism, — or to

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. XIII consider the advantages obtained by force or vio lence, on many occasions, worth the perils, terrors, and penalties of the strife. In the times of the United Irishmen, that de pendence on the power of pubhc opinion for the re dress of pohtical grievances, which has now happdy superseded the employment of physical force, was unknown ; and every political measure of great magnitude, was either carried by the menace of violence, or recourse to the demonstration of it. No party seemed sensible of the awful responsi bility of those, who " let loose the dogs of war" on the country ; and the leading men of the society of United Irishmen, who first had recourse to violent means fbr effecting their objects, were themselves less aggrieved by the unjust and partial laws they sought to overturn, than the great mass of the people, who were oppressed and borne down by them.

But where there is tyranny that " grinds the faces of the poor," and galls the hearts of the people, it is not the wise or the reflecting who are first driven to revolt, but the multitude, whose passions are exasperated, whose labour is robbed, or privi leges invaded ; who are goaded to madness by a bad government — and, in the first outbreak of their

PREFACE.

. fury, whose vengeance bursts forth in the form of a wdd justice, bootless of results, badly directed, indefinite in its objects, and, at the onset, striking at all around, like a drunken man in a quarrel, dealing blows, no matter how or where they fall. At the commencement of such struggles, the first movers never act in the way, which those who reflect on their movements might suppose best calculated to enable them to redress their wrongs. They pro ceed from one false step to another, till their cause is brought to the brink of ruin. If that cause were just, it is at such a juncture that a wise man, who loved his country and com passionated the people, were he called upon to take a part in their struggle, would deem it his duty to put these questions to himself : — Have the wrongs that are complained of, and the dangers that menace the community, reached that point, when, to leave the people without guidance, is to leave them to destruction ?

Are they embarked in a good and righteous cause ? Are they likely to succeed ? Are they sure to be bettered by success ? Have they risen in defence, not only of civil rights, but of the highest interests of all ?

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. XV Have their discontents arisen from the temporary, or the permanent, pressure of physical sufferings ? Have they overrated the value of the privileges they are seeking to obtain ? Have they been misled by ambitious and design ing men, or been goaded into rebellion by ruthless tyrants ? Can their wrongs be redressed without resistance ? Who is to decide for the people when resistance is allowable, or likely to be successful ? At what period of oppression does the law of nature justify resistance to the laws of man ? In the Divine Law, what sanction is there to be found for resistance to constituted authority ? These are questions it would behove a conscien tious man to put to himself, and to have answered satisfactorily before he stirred in the cause of a re volted people. These are questions that could not be seriously asked and truthfully rephed to, without leading to the conclusion that the experience of the past, had seldom realized the expectation of future benefits from civil war, and without bringing the enquirer to Cicero's opinion on this subject, " Ini quissimam pacem, justissimo bello antifero." The grand question, in which all the preceding queries are involved, is one, which, on political

PREFACE.

. grounds alone, can never be argued with advantage to rulers or the ruled. The appeal to heaven, as the appeal to the sword in such extremities as those of 1798, has been impi ously termed — has been too often made without a due consideration of the importance of the foregoing enquiries, before those who had recourse to it had decided on a question which involved the interests of an entire people. Sir James Macintosh has well observed, "though the solution of this tremendous pro blem requires the calmest exercise of reason, the cir cumstances which bring it forward commonly call forth mightier agents, which disturb and overpower the understanding. " In conjunctures so awful, when men feel more than they reason, their conduct is chiefly governed by the boldness or the weakness of their nature, by their love of liberty or their attachment to quiet, by their proneness or slowness to fellow-feeling with their countrymen."

He tells us " in such a conflict there is little quiet left for moral deliberation. Yet, by the immutable principles of morality, and by them alone, must the historian try the conduct of all men, before he allows himself to consider all the circumstances of time, place, opinion, principle, example, temptation, and

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. XVU obstacle, which though they never authorize a removal of the everlasting landmarks of right and wrong, ought to be well weighed in allotting a due degree of commendation or censure to human actions." * I am indebted to a gentleman well known in the literary world, than whom, few persons are better acquainted with Irish history, and none to my know ledge equally so, for the Historical Introduction which precedes the First Chapter of this Work. R. R. M. London, 10th May, 1842. * " Sir James Macintosh's History of the Revolution of 1688," Chap. X. HISTORICAL

Introduction

. THEIR LIVES AND TIMES. HISTORICAL

INTRODUCTION.

. " There is no greater error," says Sismondi, "than to suppose that any great event, or epoch, can be profitably viewed apart from the causes by which it was produced and the consequences by which it was followed ; the habit of viewing facts apart from the circumstances by which they are connected and explained, can have no other result than the fostering of prejudice, the strengthening of ignorance, and the propagation of delusion." To no portion of history is this truth more strikingly applicable than to the " Lives and Times of the United Irishmen :" it is impossible to appreciate their motives or form a right estimate of their conduct, without an accurate knowledge of the circumstances of their age and the condition of their country, and this knowledge can only be obtained by examining the causes that produced the very anomalous state of society in which they hved and acted.

Ireland is a puzzle and per plexity to Englishmen and English statesmen, chiefly B because they are unacquainted with its history; or, what is worse, that they have received as its history, fictions so monstrous, that many of them amount to physical impossibilities . A brief outline of the history of the English connection with Ireland, is therefore necessary to show how it happened that, at the close of the last century, two distinct bodies were preparing to reject allegiance to England, what motives led them to unite, and how their formidable union was dissolved. The four first centuries after Strongbow's invasion, passed away without the conquest of Ireland being completed; the wars with France and Scotland, the insurrections of the Barons, and the murderous wars of the Roses, prevented the English monarchs from establishing even a nominal supremacy over the entire island ; instead of the Irish Princes becoming feudal vassals, the Anglo-Norman barons who obtained fiefs in Ireland, adopted the usages of the native chieftains.

The attention of Henry VII. was forcibly directed to this state of things, by the adherence of the Anglo-Norman Barons and the Irish Princes with whom they had formed an alliance or connection, to the cause of the Plantagenets. They supported Lambert Simnel and Perkin War beck; when these adventurers were defeated, they showed the greatest reluctance to swear allegiance to the Tudors, and Henry could not but feel that his crown was insecure, so long as the Irish Lords had the power and will to support any adventurer who woidd dispute his title. From that time forward it be came the fixed policy of the Tudors to break down the overgrown power of the Anglo- Irish aristocracy, and to destroy the independence of the native chieftains. In England, the Tudors were enabled to create a new nobdity; the progress of the Reformation was accompanied by the elevation of several new families to the peerage, and the struggle between the Protestants and Catholics in that country, was for a considerable time, identical with the contest between the old and new aristocracy.

In Ireland it was impossible to adopt the same course of policy ; there was not a gentry from which a new aristocracy could be formed, and the Tudors were forced to supply their place by grants of land to colonists and adventurers. The Irish and the Anglo-Norman Barons looked upon these men as intruders, whde the ruling powers regarded them with peculiar favour, as being the persons most likely to estabhsh and promote an " English interest in Ireland." This political motive must not be confounded with the religious movement which took place about the same time; it was as much the object of Mary as it was of Elizabeth, to give Irish lands to English settlers, in order to obtain a hold over Ireland; it was under Mary that the lands of Leix and O'Fally were forfeited, and the lord deputy permitted to grant leases of them, at such rents as he might deem expedient.

In the midst of this political convulsion, an at tempt was made to bring Ireland to adopt the prin ciples of the Reformation, which had been just established in England. There was a vast difference between the situation of the two countries, which b deserves to be more attentively considered than it usually has been. It was on a papal grant that the English monarchs, from the very beginning, had rested their claims to the allegiance of Ireland, and there was consequently something like an abandon ment of these claims when they called upon the Irish to renounce the supremacy of the Pope. But not only had the English kings described the Pope as the source of their power, they had for centuries made it a principle object of their policy, to maintain the power of the episcopacy and priest hood in Ireland, against the ambition or avarice of the Anglo-Norman Barons.

They had themselves armed the Church with power and influence greater than they coidd overthrow. After the long night of the Middle Ages, an in tellectual revival had fided Christendom with dis cussions which weakened the strength of ancient institutions, and prepared men's minds for the recep tion of new opinions. Ireland had not shared in the general movement; whatever may have been the condition of the Island before the English invasion, the four centuries of political chaos and constant war subsequent to that event, had rendered it one of the most distracted countries in Christendom ; there had been no precursors to make way for a religious change ; the Irish had never heard of Huss, or Wickliffe, or Luther, or Calvin. The only intelligible reason proposed to them for a change of creed, was the royal authority; and they were already engaged in a struggle against that authority, to prevent their lands being parcelled out to strangers.

Add to this, that the reformed religion was preach ed by foreigners, ignorant of the very language of the country, and there will be little difficulty in perceiving that the attempt under such circumstances to establish Protestantism in Ireland, by the conversion of the Irish, was utterly impossible. In fact, the project of converting the natives was soon abandoned, for the more feasible plan of colonizing Ireland with Protestants from England. The calamitous wars of Elizabeth's reign, were waged by the Dish and by the descendants of the Anglo-Normans settled in Ireland, equally in defence of their land and their creed; when the insurgents prevaded, they expeUed the Protestant ministers and seized the goods of the English settlers ; when the royalists triumphed, they established churches and confiscations.

After ten years of almost incessant war, an expenditure of money that drained the Eng lish exchequer, and of life that nearly depopulated Ireland, the entire island was subdued by the arms of Elizabeth ; but the animosity of the hostde parties was not abated, they had merely dropped their weapons from sheer exhaustion. Colonies had been planted in the south of Ireland, on the estates forfeited by the Earl of Desmond and his adherents, but the settlers were nothing more than garrisons in a hostile country, they continued " aliens in language, rebgion and blood" to the people by whom they were surrounded. Under such circumstances it was not to be expected that many of the higher ranks of the English clergy or laity would seek a settlement in Ireland ; most of those who emigrated, were more or less attached to the principles of Puri tanism, which Elizabeth hated at least as much as she did Popery, and this circumstance gave the Protestant Church in Ireland a stronger tendency to Calvinistic doctrine and discipline than would have been allowed in England.

Geneva was a greater authority with the Irish Protestants than Lambeth, as any one may see who consults the canons of the Irish church; and this unfortunately widened the difference between them and the natives of the country they came to colonize. A new difficulty about the tenure of land arose, which afterwards produced very fatal consequences. According to English law, the ultimate property of all estates is in the crown, and land is held only by virtue of a royal grant : according to the Irish law, the property of land was vested in the sept, tribe or community, who were co-partners with their chief, rather than his tenants or vassals. Whenever a change was made from Irish to English tenure, an obvious injustice was done to the inferior occupants, for they were reduced from the rank of proprietors to that of tenants at will.

Tins principle was never thoroughly understood by the English Lords Justices, and hence they unintentionally inflicted grievous wrongs, when they tried to confer upon any portion of the country the benefits of English law. In fact, the change from Irish to Enghsh tenure involved a complete revolution of landed property, which would have required the most dehcate and skilful manage ment to be accomphshed safely, but those to whom the process was entrusted, were utterly destitute of any quahfications for such a task. The Commission of Grace issued by James I. for the purpose of seeming the titles of Irish land, was viewed with just suspicion by the great and the small proprietors, and its results were an uncertainty of tenure and possession, which kept every person in a state of alarm. The real or supposed plot of Tyrone, Tyrconnel and O'Doherty, afforded a pretext for confiscating the six northern counties over which the sovereignty of these chieftains extended ; but whatever was the amount of their gudt, it is obvious that they could only forfeit that which they themselves possessed.

They were not the proprietors of these counties ; the actual occupants of the sod were not accused, much less convicted, of any participation in the plot ; and therefore the sweeping seizure of half a million of acres, without any regard to the rights of those who were in actual possession, was a monstrous injustice, to which few histories can furnish a parallel. It must however be confessed, that this violent and odious measure, was quite in accordance with the spirit of the age; confiscations and grants of land had become a regular part of the pubhc administration under the Tudors, and was continued under the Stuarts ; the old Norman aristocracy was thus broken down, and means provided for endowing a new nobility ; the security of the reformed religion was ensured, because its interests were identified with the tenure of the new estates.

The Ulster confiscation differed from the forfeitures in England and the South of Ireland, chiefly by its vast extent; in order that the grants to new settlers should be efficient, it was necessary either to remove or exter minate an entire population. Setting aside the consideration of justice, the plans which James formed for the Plantation of Ulster, were on the whole wise and prudent. It was resolved that the land should be divided into estates of moderate size ; that the grantees should within a limited time erect bawns, that is, castles with forti fied court-yards ; that they should settle a number of English or Scotch tenants on the lands; that they should reside on their estates and never alienate any portion of them to the mere Irish. Had the King combined with this scheme a plan for doing justice to the native occupants, and had the local government executed the royal instructions as they were originaUy framed, the Plantation of Ulster might have produced all the good which is ascribed to it, without the attendant evils by which it was, at least for a considerable time, more than overbalanced.

At first every thing seemed to promise a favourable result ; the City of London took an active share in the scheme, and built on its grants the cities of Colerain and Londonderry; the new order of Ba ronets was created, and the sums paid by those who purchased this new dignity, were destined to the support of soldiers for the defence of the new Planta tion. The first difficulty which presented itself, arose from James's resolution to give a proportion of the forfeitures to his Scottish countrymen ; a determination which gave great offence to the English, and which eventually exercised a fatal influence over the fortunes of the Stuarts, for the Scotch who settled in Ireland were subsequently the staunchest of adhe rents to the Covenant. A more fatal error was the choice of settlers : surrounded by a set of hungry favourites and mendicant courtiers, James bestowed grants of lands with a reckless profusion surpass ing that of Henry VIII. at the suppression of monasteries.

Instead of a valuable body of settlers, he created a hungry horde of land-jobbers ; English tenants were sparingly introduced, few bawns were built ; proprietors remained at court and entrusted the management of their grants to agents, and the fatal system of subletting was established under the sanction of the City of London. It is not necessary in the present day to dwell upon the notorious profligacy, corruption and infamy of the court of James I., or to show that no iniquity was too monstrous, and no craft too mean, for the royal idiot when he sought the means of gratifying his rapacious favomites. Irish forfeitures had proved a most valuable supply, but the extravagance with which they were given away soon exhausted the stock, and it became necessary to seek out new sources of plunder.

An inquisition into titles, based on the principle of English law, that the right of possession to estates must be ultimately derived from the King, was the expedient which presented itself; but as English law had not been introduced into the whole of Ireland untd the close of Eliza beth's reign, and as fom hundred years of anarchy had produced countless usurpations and uncertainb ties, there was scarce a landed proprietor in Ireland, whose estates were not placed at the mercy of the crown. A new host of harpies was let loose on the devoted country; the lawyers and the judges were incited to use every device of legal chicanery-, by pro mises of a share in the spoil ; and to the half-million of acres confiscated as we have before described, another half-mdlion was added under pretence of informality in the title.

Even this amount of for feitures was insufficient to gratify the rapacity which the King's lavish distribution had excited, but in the midst of the proceedings James died, and the task of completing his project devolved upon his unhappy successor. The pecuniary distresses of Charles inspired the Irish proprietors with the hope of obtaining security; they presented to the king certain regulations for confirming the titles of estates, and establishing an indulgence of rebgion, called " Graces," and offered the King a very large subsidy provided he wrould permit them to become the law of the land. Charles took the money, and eluded the performance of his promise. He had adopted his father's principle of policy to create at all hazards an " English interest in Ireland," and to effect this by pushing the principle of forfeiture to an extent which James himself had not contemplated.

Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, was the Lord Deputy chosen to execute this iniquitous project, and he commenced his pro ceedings on the largest possible scale, by attempting to obtain the forfeiture of the entire province of Connaught, under the pretence of defective titles. One jury in the county of Galway had the courage to find a verdict against the crown ; Wentworth arrested the jurors, brought them before the court of Star Chamber in Dublin, sentenced each to a fine of four thousand pounds, and to imprisonment until the said juror had confessed on his knees that he was gudty of wilful and corrupt perjury. The sheriff was thrown into prison, and Wentworth pressed hard that he should be executed as a warning to other functionaries, adding "my arrows are cruel that wound so mortally, but it is necessary that the King should establish his rights."

The forfeiture of the lands of Connaught, and perhaps of all Ireland, would have been completed, had not the increasing troubles in England and the open revolt of Scotland, induced Charles to recal his Deputy to scenes of more immediate interest and importance. It became the King's interest to conciliate his Irish subjects, and the Graces became the law of the land. The Graces it is true were passed, but the King was no longer a sovereign; his power had been transferred to the Puritan Parhament of England and the Covenanters of Scotland; both of these bodies formaUy declared that they would not consent to the toleration of Popery in Ireland, which was in fact to proclaim a war of extermination against the Irish Catholics. A conspiracy was organized against the supremacy of the British Parliament , the main object of those who joined in it, being to obtain for Catholicism in Ireland, the same freedom which the swords of the Covenanters had won for Presbyterianism in Scotland.

An associate revealed the plot to the Puritan Lords Justices at the moment it was about to explode, and Dublin was saved from the insurgents. But the first signal of revolt spread desolation over the northern counties; the native Irish, who had been driven from their lands at the time of the Great Plantation, rose upon the settlers ; and in spite of the exertions of their more merciful leaders drove them from their settlements, and when they encountered any resistance, slaughtered them without mercy. This massacre has been absurdly exaggerated, and prejudice has often induced writers to involve all the Cathodes of Ireland in its guilt, but in truth it was confined to the northern counties, and was directed exclusively against the English settlers on the confiscated lands. The Scotch Pres byterians were not only spared, but allowed to retain possession of their property untd they took up arms to support the cause of the Enghsh Puritans : in fact, the Ulster revolt was rather a Jacquerie than a rebellion, and it was of course accompanied by aU the outrages and cruelties which might be expected from an infuriate and starving peasantry, brutalized by long oppression and goaded by ostentatious insult.

About twelve thousand persons were probably mur dered in the first outbreak of popular rage, before the Catholic lords and gentry could interfere and give the insurrection the dignity of a civil war. A sanguinary proclamation issued by the Lords Jus tices, and a formal vote of the British Parliament that Popery should be exterminated in Ireland, rendered the civil war inevitable, and rendered it impossible for any person to devise a means of com promise and conciliation. This dreadful war, in which both sides manifested an equal degree of exterminating fury, is one of the most perplexing recorded in the annals of any country, from the great variety of the parties engaged? and from their rancorous hostility towards each other. The Enghsh were divided into the friends of the Parliament and the friends of the King ; the latter again, were subdivided into a party disposed to grant reasonable terms to the Cathohc Lords, and a party which agreed with the Puritans that Popery should not be tolerated; aU were however united in a desire, that advantage should be taken of the com motions to reap a new harvest of confiscations and grants.